Win 9x registry question also Win.ini & System.ini question

[JonHolman]

Ok, it has been a while since I have read any books on Win 9x and yesterday I was thinking that the registry was made up of Win.ini and System.ini but someone corrected me and told me it was User.dat and System.dat. I'm thinking this person is correct and I forgot. Can anyone confirm this?

Also, then what does win.ini and system.ini do? I'm thinking it sets the enviroment like what programs start at start up(stuff you can edit in msconfig). But, I just want to be sure.

Thanks for your help.

 

[AndyHui]

This person is correct.

System.ini and Win.ini no longer play a major role in Windows configuration. To all intents and purposes, under Win3.x, win.ini acted like Autoexec.bat and system.ini much like config.sys.

Now the Registry is read first in Win9x; these files are there for legacy programs with the contents of these files translated and merged for use in the Registry.

 

[Shuja]

The WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI is a must for WIN 3x and WIN 95 but there is no need of these files in 98 and onwards. These files are there (In WIN 98) only for backup copability. You may be running Corel5.0 like programme, which is compatible on older OS. If you simply delelte the folder of Corel 5.0 from your system having WIN 98 OS, there will be no problem but if you delete Office 2000, there will be lot of problem while booting the system. it is because Corel 5.0 has registry entry in WIN.INI and system.INI but the Office 2000 have inetgrety written in the User.dat and system.dat files.
So if you are running older version of any application, *.ini files will be there.